Hundreds of trucks parade around the Brickyard to ‘pick up’ a new world record

Did you know the Guinness Book of World Records has a listing for the longest parade of pickup trucks? Neither did we. So, like you, we were shocked to learn that until August 2013, the record wasn’t even held in America – land of the free and home of the half-ton. Nope. The record was set at a racetrack in Canada, way back in 2012. But with all due respect to our good friends to the north, such a record seems like it belongs in the States. Learning it didn’t was sort of a kick in the shorts along the lines of watching that Japanese guy win the hot dog-eating contest at Coney Island.

Bringing the record back to the US of A was a task tackled by the staff of Rural Radio, the new channel 80 on SiriusXM Satellite Radio. Rural Radio is produced by the same folks who produce RFD-TV, a cable television network. On TV and satellite radio, the networks focus on the business of agriculture, rural life and rural-influenced lifestyles, such as horses. And with pickups being as common on farms as sand on a beach, lining up a few hundred of them to break the record wouldn’t be too difficult.

The challenge, however, was finding a venue large enough to conduct the parade and Rural Radio found it at the Indianapolis Motors Speedway. More than 500 trucks rolled out onto the historic 2.5-mile track, while a judge from Guinness Book of World Records officially made it official. Interestingly, fewer than 400 of the trucks qualified for the final count. Sure, there was an old Jeep in there, a few flatbeds and a few other homebuilt hot rods that even raised our journalistic eyebrow, but according to Guinness’s strict accounting, more than 100 of the vehicles were ultimately ruled non-pickups.

We didn’t see anywhere near that many questionable rigs, but appealing the rulings would be futile, however, because there were more than enough legit pickups to smash the previous record. When the dust – and diesel exhaust – settled, 386 of the trucks officially participated in the World’s Largest Parade of Pickup Trucks, eclipsing the previous record by 113 trucks.

Sorry Canada. The record is home where it belongs, but we can empathize with something seemingly a birthright going elsewhere. After all, within the last decade, teams including the Tampa Bay Lightning and Anaheim Ducks have been chiseled onto the Stanley Cup, for crying out loud. You’ve still got Guinness records, though – we looked them up – including the dude with the longest beard, the most people shaving their heads simultaneously (57), the largest game of dodgeball (4,979 participants) and the world’s largest parking lot (at the West Edmonton Mall, in Alberta).

That dodgeball record will be way harder to beat than the head-shaving one, but it kinda sounds like the world’s largest parking lot should be an American thing, too. Sorry, we may have to challenge you on that one, too. Notice has been served.